Which "M" to Master first??

[DiskoJoe]

Its good to know how to wipe you butt even if you have a machine that can do it for you.

Its very good to know how to use your camera in fully manual setting. After shooting long enough a lot of this should come quite naturally if you pay attention to your exif data.

 

[robbins.photo]

Its good to know how to wipe you butt even if you have a machine that can do it for you.

Its very good to know how to use your camera in fully manual setting. After shooting long enough a lot of this should come quite naturally if you pay attention to your exif data.

Again, don't disagree in principle. But I guess my question would be if you had read a short set of instructions on how to wipe your own butt, how much practice do you think you'd really need to do it? I mean there are a few points to using manual focus you need to be aware of, but other than for the purposes of being able to do it quickly what do you really need to practice here?

 

[sashbar]

Hello All,

Well, master may be a strong word but I'm trying to step up my game. The past few years I've shot mostly in aperture priority. Would it be better for me to focus next on learning how to shoot in manual focus or the manual mode? Does it really matter which one I work on next?

Thanks for your help!
Tom

Well it might just be me but I don't see much purpose served in manually focusing - unless there's actually some benefit to the final product that I'm unaware of or might not be considering. I mean if I look at a photo I can't tell if it was manually focused or auto focused unless someone tells me and frankly when I'm looking at photos that's pretty much the very last thing that I really want to know or care about. So unless you've got some lenses that won't autofocus for whatever reason, just doesn't seem like something worth taking th time to "master". Just my 2 cents worth of course, YMMV.

There is at least one situation where manual focus works much much better. If, let's say, you do street photography, have chosen your setting, the background etc., and you are waiting for someone to enter the scene, the best way to capture it is to focus manually beforehand. You can do it because you know the spot, or the range. This way you save time needed to autofocus when you to pull the trigger and avoid mistakes when camera focuses on the wrong object. Usually you have a split second for a shot and with autofocus you can easily miss. Also, when there is not enough light, manual focus often is preferable. And of course if you mostly shoot white walls. But I would not say you have to "master" it. It is quite simple.

 

[robbins.photo]

Hello All,

Well, master may be a strong word but I'm trying to step up my game. The past few years I've shot mostly in aperture priority. Would it be better for me to focus next on learning how to shoot in manual focus or the manual mode? Does it really matter which one I work on next?

Thanks for your help!
Tom

Well it might just be me but I don't see much purpose served in manually focusing - unless there's actually some benefit to the final product that I'm unaware of or might not be considering. I mean if I look at a photo I can't tell if it was manually focused or auto focused unless someone tells me and frankly when I'm looking at photos that's pretty much the very last thing that I really want to know or care about. So unless you've got some lenses that won't autofocus for whatever reason, just doesn't seem like something worth taking th time to "master". Just my 2 cents worth of course, YMMV.

There is at least one situation where manual focus works much much better. If, let's say, you do street photography, have chosen your setting, the background etc., and you are waiting for someone to enter the scene, the best way to capture it is to focus manually beforehand. You can do it because you know the spot, or the range. This way you save time needed to autofocus when you to pull the trigger and avoid mistakes when camera focuses on the wrong object. Usually you have a split second for a shot and with autofocus you can easily miss. Also, when there is not enough light, manual focus often is preferable. And of course if you mostly shoot white walls. But I would not say you have to "master" it. It is quite simple.

Again, no argument with using prefocus techniques - and no argument that manual focus has it uses. Merely pointing out that for those of us who don't really use manual focus regularly it just doesn't, at least to me, seem to be a fruitful pursuit to practice skills that your not going to use in a timely enough fashion to have made your practice worthwhile. I don't really do street photography myself, but lets assume for a moment I spend some time this week messing around with prefocus, etc - now I've already read how to do it. I practice it for a few days till I get it down. 2 years later I actually find a situation where I might put that into use - well, since I haven't done it in 2 years that couple of days I spent practicing it really isn't going to prove all that useful. I'll have to default back to the information I have on it so really the practice didn't benefit me all that much.

 

[TomWatson]

Seems like the manual mode is the better way to spend my time for now. That's what I've been doing for the last week and it has really made me think more than any other time about the different aspects of the exposure triangle. Thank you everyone for your comments!

 

[cynicaster]

I use manual focus sometimes if I have the camera on a tripod to take a still-life shot. I’ll turn on live view, zoom in 10x on the LCD, and manually dial in the focus to where I want it. Seems to work much better than autofocus for such shots, at least on my low-end camera (T3i).

 

[imagemaker46]

Learn to master light.

 

[TomWatson]

Learn to master light.

But light doesn't start with M

 

[runnah]

Baiting.

 

[astroNikon]

Learn to master light.

Is that a Yoda quote ?

 

[amolitor]

With a modern DSLR, doing "manual" anything really just means "disconnect the interlock between the sensing system and the doing system, so I can do it myself" which is arguably kind of stupid. The modern DSLR is not set up to make actual manual usage easy at all.

Without a third party viewscreen, manual focusing mainly means turning the ring until the AF systems says "BIP!" in which case you might as well let the AF system turn the ring, which it can do better and faster.

Manual exposure mainly means watching the in-camera exposure meter and doing what it tells you, with tweaks. It is entirely equivalent to using a metering mode with exposure compensation, unless you're just guessing exposures yourself (in which case, why on earth are you doing that?!).

There are exceptions. Manual focusing using a zoomed in Live View, on a tripod, is a useful trick to have up your sleeve for those tricky situations. Manual focusing is necessary with an MF lens. If your lens doesn't couple, you have to guess exposures, and so on.

 

[runnah]

I still use manual flash powder, 2 scoops = 1/8th power.

These dick waving threads are silly. I shoot in all modes because I do not care what others think of me.

 

[TomWatson]

With a modern DSLR, doing "manual" anything really just means "disconnect the interlock between the sensing system and the doing system, so I can do it myself" which is arguably kind of stupid.

Does this mean you never shoot in the manual mode? If so, why not? Which mode do you mostly use?

 

[amolitor]

I shoot manual a LOT, mainly because I have MF lenses which don't couple with the meter.

But when I have a lens on that my camera will admit to recognizing, I'm in Av mode with single point focus AF, pretty much all the time, and running the exposure compensation up and down to taste.

 

[TomWatson]

I shoot manual a LOT, mainly because I have MF lenses which don't couple with the meter.

But when I have a lens on that my camera will admit to recognizing, I'm in Av mode with single point focus AF, pretty much all the time, and running the exposure compensation up and down to taste.

Got it, thanks!